Jenni Fagan (2016) The Sunlight Pilgrims.

I’m a fan of Jenni Fagin’s writing. And the Sunlight Pilgrims is terrific. Sunlight Pilgrims are those supernatural beings we sometimes hear about that can live on light alone. There’s a joke there. It only works if you’re anorexic.

Fagin’s characters are always gallus.

Dylan McRae is six-foot-seven but rarely seen. He works as a projectionist in a Soho cinema. Or did. He lived with his mum and granny. Or did. They died. He lost the cinema to the kind of moneyed folk that make you puke. Or did.

He took a bus up north and kept going.

Clachan Falls caravan park. His granny came from the Scottish Islands and had the foresight to know she was dying and to buy Dylan somewhere to live.

Stella lives next door to him with her mum, Constance. Stella used to be a boy. But she couldn’t stick it. The lies and deceit. She’s a girl now. Other in their wee community are not so forgiven. The lads she used to hang about with gave her a kicking. Cause that’s what you do with a boy that is now a girl.

Worse, Stella’s best mate, the one she shared a teenage kiss, was part of the crew. She hates him too. Kinda. She talks to Vito on the internet. He’s transitioning too. Stella is super cool.

Up north it’s cold, but with global warming and the loss of the Gulf Stream, and the melting of the Polar Ice Caps, temperatures are set to plummet to record lows.

The book is structured in that way with the temperature getting colder and colder—minus 70—and civilisation breaking down in the beginning of a new Ice Age?  

Constance can handle it. She picks things up from the dump and does makeovers and sells them to people with a bit of spare cash. Middle-class types. She’s in an on-off relationship with Alistair, father of Stella, and another guy whose name I can’t remember, but he’s abroad, anyway.

Dylan takes to her in a big way (no pun intended). Stella has a big part to play in their relationship, which is closer than the reader imagines, which is expertly plotted and part of their denouement. Maybe the human race’s denouement? Read on.

Unleash the Beastie! https://bit.ly/bannkie

Constance